


Variation 1

by seekingferret



Series: The Jessica Goldberg Variations [2]
Category: Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Collection:Purimgifts Day 2, F/M, Jews In Space, Space Stations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-16
Updated: 2011-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:02:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingferret/pseuds/seekingferret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All of this has happened before. All of it will happen again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Variation 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darthjamtart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthjamtart/gifts).



Station Rialto is cramped, so she's known Lorenzo her whole life, despite her father's best efforts to keep her away from him. The space station is a dangerous place for a young girl, he's told her, and she knows it, she's seen the list of hundreds of ways to suddenly die on this space station that a bored poet wrote while stuck in his room after freefall vertigo induced a mental break. But she's also seen the lists of safety procedures to follow, and she's read them so many times in her short life that she can toll them off faster than her father can recite his Bar Mitzvah portion.

She's known Lorenzo her whole life, but she only got to know him when he needed help with his astrogation homework. He offered to pay her, and decicreds were tight the way her father doled out her allowance, so she accepted. She told her father whatever she needed to tell him, first sneaking out to 'flute practice' in a tiny study room in the school module, then inventing a Hebrew tutor who could only study with her via tightbeam from Earth between the hours of midnight and three, station time. She studies Hebrew frantically in her free time to cover the lie.

The night they went out of the antigrav field together and just drifted through the dark electrical conduit canals together, so quiet they could hear each other's thoughts, was the night Jessica made two important decisions. First, that she and Lorenzo were destined to be together forever. And two, that she needed to get off Station Rialto if this were going to happen without Shylock's interference.

She planned the whole escape herself, running the important details by Lorenzo but not really caring too much if he actually approved them. The two shuttlepods are rented in her father's name, one decoy sent by autopilot to Station Trevi, the other carrying them quietly off to Mars, where Lorenzo has the promise of work on beautiful Mount Olympos. She carries with her bags of her father's germanium, which she'll pay back when they can afford it.

It is lonely on the highest mountain in the solar system, where Lorenzo becomes secretary to Governor Bassanio, but Jessica and Lorenzo are happy together. She never tells him that she continues the Hebrew lessons whenever she has a free moment. Out of force of habit or what, she's not sure.


End file.
